MORE CRIME STORY BEGININGS

Here's a few more short story openings I've come across recently. I found a great graphic (above) to illustrate the first one. How do you like the sinister way the man in the crowd looks, the man who's looking over his shoulder a bit right of the middle?

Anyway, the story: an off duty police detective is in a football stadium watching a game when he spots a suspect (above) in a kidnapping case he's investigating. The rich parents paid the ransom and the child was promptly returned as agreed, but the suspect escaped and the money wasn't recovered.

The detective follows the man back to his apartment, cuffs him and, on an impulse...even though he's never done anything like this before...he demands half the ransom the 'napper took for the child. The kidnapper is appalled. The unfairness of it rankles him. After all, he did all the work so why should he get only half the pay? A fight ensues and the two roll around the floor, battling for the cop's gun.

There's more to it, but I'll leave it at that. It's an interesting story because the corrupt-only-once detective and the "wronged" kidnapper are both strangely ethical in their own way.

The next story (above) takes place on a lonely path near a lake. A man's boss believes he's having an affair with his wife. The employee is innocent and he's hoping to clarify that as they walk along a lake at night, but when he turns to talk to his boss...he isn't there.

After a futile search the man calls the police. They look and find nothing, then the wife shows up and claims the employee had threatened to drown her husband that very day. It's a frame-up! Is the boss still alive? Did the wife kill him? What's the employee to do?

The next story (above) is about a boys' summer camp in the 1950s. Every camp has at least one boy who doesn't quite fit in and who's ridiculed by the other boys. In this camp the adults made the mistake of giving the kid a .22 rifle for shooting practice. You can imagine what happens.

The kick in the story is that it's told from the timid boy's P.O.V., and he's not honest with himself. It's hard to know exactly what went down because the narrator isn't reliable.  The writer raises the question: could a murderer who really believes his own innocence ever be found guilty of a crime?  

Lastly, here's (above) a story about a sentimental crook and his beloved mother. The crook hires a hit man to bump off a pesky business partner, and the whole thing is discussed in front of the crook's mother. She doesn't seem to care, she's just concerned that the two men eat their chicken soup and bundle up when they go out. 

The story seems straightforward enough at first, then the mother is slowly revealed to be cagey and calculating, and maybe something worse. It's the kind of crime story O'Henry would write, if he wrote crime stories. 

  

HOW SHORT STORIES BEGIN

Here's the story I'm reading now. It starts with a vivid description of a lonely, dismal swamp on an overcast day. It's not the kind of place that attracts fisherman or tourists...the only thing it attracts are mosquitoes, dense clouds of them. A deputy drives by and sees a familiar face: Billy, an oddly quiet local boy who doesn't seem to mind the bugs.

That's all I've read so far but I'm amazed that the opening succeeds in being a grabber even though there's not a single original element in it. I guess some situations...the ramshackle mansion buffeted by a lightning storm, the frightened woman walking along a lonely street at night...are innately interesting and are not diminished by repetition. Interesting, eh?

Another story is about a night time driver in rural Louisiana who gets a flat tire and pulls over to the side of the road. He opens the trunk to get his spare tire and discovers...Gasp!...a woman's body. He has no idea who she is or how she got there.

Stranger still, her ID and papers identify her as his girlfriend who he's eloping with.  There's even a photo of the two of them together and that's his signature on the bottom...but how could that be? He's never seen her before.

If he calls the police they'll surely believe he murdered her. If he doesn't call and buries her instead, she'll be discovered and there's not a jury on Earth that would acquit him. What should he do?

The next story is about a suicide jumper in a big 1950s American city. A crowd forms on the opposite side of the street.

Police with a megaphone are unable to talk the guy down so they call his wife and ask her to come out. When that doesn't work somebody gets the idea of calling his mistress. After all, a man often won't listen to his wife, but his mistress...well, that's a different thing. Unfortunately the two women meet and there's only one megaphone.

Here's the last story: A young man breaks a pawnshop window and takes a fist full of diamonds. A passer-by sees the crime, chases the kid and captures him just as the police arrive. The problem is that the kid hasn't got the diamonds on him when he's caught, even though he was never out of the sight of witnesses. His captor doesn't have them either and they're not hidden anywhere. So, where did they go?

I'll give you a hint: broken glass looks the same as diamonds...only there's a lot more to the story than that.

Nifty, eh?